NEW YORK: Apple told a federal court Friday that it should not have to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by a Brooklyn drug dealer and that the case would lead to "an avalanche" of similar demands if prosecutors prevailed.

Apple's lawyers, in a new filing in US District Court for the Eastern District of New York, said a judge should uphold a ruling that the Justice Department had gone beyond its authority in demanding Apple's technical help.

The filing was the latest in an intense dispute that began two months ago when the FBI sought Apple's help to gain access to an iPhone used by one of the attackers in a mass shooting last year in San Bernardino, California, which killed 14 people.

The FBI was able to get into the iPhone associated with the San Bernardino case without Apple's help last month after paying an undisclosed third party to demonstrate how to work around the defenses built into the phone.

But the FBI says that solution will not work on other types of phones, and the Justice Department has gone to court to seek Apple's help in getting into the phone in the Brooklyn drug case as well as a case in Boston involving a gang.

In the filing Friday, Apple's lawyers said the Justice Department had failed to show that the company's help was really necessary in the Brooklyn case. Moreover, they asserted that the iPhone would most likely produce "minimal evidentiary value" anyway, because it was last used two years ago and the phone's owner, Jun Feng, and the other defendants in the methamphetamine case had pleaded guilty.

Emily Pierce, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said Friday that the help prosecutors were seeking from Apple was minimal. And she noted that Apple had provided similar assistance 70 times before without objection until recent months.

"Apple has said it would take them only a few hours to open this kind of phone, because they already have the mechanism that would allow them to do so," Pierce said.

Several people ET spoke with about Ericsson’s India operations, including its current and former employees, said the Stockholm-based firm has reduced headcount in the last one year or so across functions, in line with its global restructuring.